For the happy man! - Collected writings DEPRESSION: Ed Atkins
For the happy man! - Collected writings DEPRESSION: Ed Atkins For the happy man! - Collected writings DEPRESSION: Ed Atkins
siblings that used to blanket the head, spackle under the armpit, across the arms, fingers. The primal, true-mole-down that coats certain faces. The primal down that got SLOUGHED OFF about a year in. To discover, from some recess of an illustrated encyclopedia, how pubic hair was the way it was – is, perhaps, the way it is – because of its LOCATION. Proximity to dampness, heat; girding genitals – getting tangled, wadded, soaked again. A distinct lack of exposure to sunlight, the sobering breeze, snow, etc. That you might have understood them as stalactites, accreted over a great period, silt-stuffed, subterranean; a raw architecture that, pictured in cross-section beneath an overground of forest, becomes a shadow – – a haunted forest of hanged trees, shorn of their limbs, their bark, their sap; great heaves of plated dead skin, now. I wanted to find out whether you recalled your first VIVID experience of death. When, in early childhood, you found a dead mouse in the grounds of a cottage. Your sympathy moved, you buried the mouse in a mossy spot. Remembering the place, you went back a couple of days later, and moving the moss away, discovered a black insect. I wanted to ask if you’d been thinking about something dead growing. Stalactites, for example. Hair, for our purposes. –Made up of dead skin, of course. Thrust up through those tight follicular nozzles; the
great prairies of skin are, in each generation’s death, brutally compacted into hair. The follicle determining the shape: gritted teeth and sewer grates, pet baskets, vacated honeycombs, firmly interlaced fingers, elaborate-tipped piping bags, warm, warm, warm spring mouths. Pubic hair forced through some sort of carving of an eye the size of a follicle: a protrusive gaze; a gaze shedding death. Lustrous dead skin being the only sufficient means of living beside and in material cahoots with, death. Beneath: [...] The maintenance of the acid mantle, regularly stimulating the subaceous gland. The wetting action. The physical action. The emulsifying action. Your porous skin always having been partially Stygian, if I’m honest; latterly overawed, flooded, overrun. Now the only part of you that grows is your GORGEOUS hair, in a last spasmodic jettisoning of life as your ruined skin hardens in preparation for a final, chemical peel. The only thing that moves, now, is your hair, in those eddies of that black water – (the slipstreams of massive pike, of egg-sputtering sturgeon, of scuttling, barbering crabs.) The only thing that remains now is hair; the indigest-
- Page 41 and 42: Liquid crystals running terminal co
- Page 43 and 44: the fuck away - and then STRAIGHTAW
- Page 45 and 46: ness. I conjure the very medicine t
- Page 48 and 49: Warm, Warm, Warm Spring Mouths 2013
- Page 50 and 51: And no provision has been made for
- Page 52 and 53: And this whole thing a concession,
- Page 54 and 55: And it’s not too much to imagine
- Page 56 and 57: And bullet-time, really, is a lifes
- Page 58 and 59: gallon or so of PVA semen. Dispassi
- Page 60 and 61: Inexpensive. Which is part of it, t
- Page 62 and 63: This is no longer an experience, bu
- Page 64 and 65: A heavy mood that turned away from
- Page 66 and 67: (Is this thing on?) And a trellis o
- Page 68 and 69: Into the cool water. This one goes
- Page 70 and 71: This one goes out to your singular
- Page 72: I don’t want to hear any news on
- Page 75 and 76: I wanted to ask whether you thought
- Page 77 and 78: legibility. A primordial story of s
- Page 79 and 80: owner of the eyelash, your lover. B
- Page 81 and 82: The smell was certainly sexual, I t
- Page 83 and 84: discrete line to slight-inked line
- Page 85 and 86: oily substance not unlike jojoba, f
- Page 87 and 88: muscles) Averting our eyes from one
- Page 89 and 90: late to be a fucking lie told badly
- Page 91: fingernail, most likely. Fingers re
- Page 95 and 96: the same mistake again. The dead ey
- Page 97 and 98: -Resembling the lichen that seems t
- Page 100 and 101: A tumour (in English) 2011
- Page 102 and 103: punctuation and that peculiar synta
- Page 104 and 105: and waning produces a horrific pull
- Page 106 and 107: frozen, unknown. It’s not mine, t
- Page 108 and 109: pink, marbled-looking veneer inspir
- Page 110 and 111: notch at its highest point with a c
- Page 112 and 113: [...] If it’s like this in the mo
- Page 114 and 115: the crew: Fletcher, the navy techni
- Page 116 and 117: scenes remind us that this isn’t
- Page 118 and 119: Grotesque, just like this text here
- Page 120 and 121: The tumour, spanning many acres now
- Page 122 and 123: TEETH, and a battle is pitched betw
- Page 124 and 125: A cave again, this time somewhere i
- Page 126 and 127: The underside of a banana slug. The
- Page 128 and 129: taxidermist, so as to preserve its
- Page 130 and 131: a golf ball. I fucking hate golf, y
- Page 132 and 133: As previously discussed elsewhere,
- Page 134 and 135: varieties: RODS AND CONES (rods of
- Page 136 and 137: Feel its tentacular motion inside y
- Page 138 and 139: droxyurea, Hydrea, Idarubicin, Idam
- Page 140 and 141: of blasé humanity writhing happily
great prairies of skin are, in each generation’s death, brutally<br />
compacted into hair. The follicle determining <strong>the</strong> shape:<br />
gritted teeth and sewer grates,<br />
pet baskets,<br />
vacated honeycombs,<br />
firmly interlaced fingers,<br />
elaborate-tipped piping bags,<br />
warm, warm,<br />
warm spring mouths.<br />
Pubic hair forced through some sort of carving of an<br />
eye <strong>the</strong> size of a follicle: a protrusive gaze; a gaze shedding<br />
death.<br />
Lustrous dead skin being <strong>the</strong> only sufficient means of<br />
living beside and in material cahoots with, death. Beneath:<br />
[...]<br />
The maintenance of <strong>the</strong> acid <strong>man</strong>tle, regularly stimulating<br />
<strong>the</strong> subaceous gland. The wetting action. The physical<br />
action. The emulsifying action.<br />
Your porous skin always having been partially<br />
Stygian, if I’m honest; latterly overawed, flooded, overrun.<br />
Now<br />
<strong>the</strong> only part of you that grows is your GORGEOUS<br />
hair, in a last spasmodic jettisoning of life as your ruined<br />
skin hardens in preparation for a final, chemical peel.<br />
The only thing that moves, now, is your hair, in those<br />
eddies of that black water –<br />
(<strong>the</strong> slipstreams of massive pike,<br />
of egg-sputtering sturgeon,<br />
of scuttling, barbering crabs.)<br />
The only thing that remains now is hair; <strong>the</strong> indigest-
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